Disability Studies MA

16/09/2025

Disability Studies MA

Programme Leader, Prof David Bolt.

This programme is face to face, full-time or part-time, and available to September and February starters.

The programme is aligned with the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies and taught by tutors in the Faculty of Education and Social Science, Liverpool Hope University.

Disability Studies is a relatively new but rapidly growing academic discipline, as illustrated by the international proliferation of courses, events, networks, journals, book series, monographs, and edited collections. Though drawing on this progress substantially, the Disability Studies MA at Liverpool Hope University differs from similar programmes insofar as it places particular emphasis on cultural issues. We are not only interested in the policies, prejudices, and professions around disability, but also its representation in literature, media, film, art, and so on.

Liverpool Hope University is well suited as a host for this programme. The regional, national, and international profile of the programme is enhanced greatly by the Centre for Culture & Disability Studies–and, by extension, the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, the seminars and conferences, the YouTube channel, the Literary Disability Studies book series, the Autocritical Disability Studies book series, the Cultural History of Disability multi-volume project, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies, and an enthusiastic team of widely-published tutors.

The modules included are Critical Disability Theory; Disability and Professional Practice; Modelling Disability; Disability and Disciplines; Research Methods; and a Dissertation.

The taught elements of the course include, for full-time students, two evenings per week (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6-9pm), and for part-time students, one evening per week. These classes are held at Hope Park.

For information on how to apply:

Disability Studies is a relatively new but rapidly growing academic discipline, as illustrated by the international proliferation of courses, events, networks, journals, book series, monographs, edited collections, and so on.

04/09/2025

The Playground Model of Disability: Dis/honesty Tropes in Contemporary British Sociocultural Representation

New book by David Bolt – available with introductory discount

This book coins the term dis/honesty to define the moments in which dishonesty is invoked by disability, and vice versa. The concept is explored via a selection of contemporary British sociocultural representations – namely, short jokes, disability sitcom, soap opera, activist radio interviews, fictionalised observations, and the robotic positionality of Artificial Intelligence. The Playground Model of Disability will be of particular interest to readers in disability studies, as well as those in humour studies, radio studies, media studies, television studies, literary studies, cultural studies, inclusion studies, drama, sociology, and critical theory.

For more information: https://www.routledge.com/The-Playground-Model-of-Disability-DishonestyTropesinContemporaryBritishSocioculturalRepresentation/Bolt/p/book/9781041064923

For 20% discount use this code: 25AFLY3

More than being counter to what we must surely endeavour to consider the status quo of honesty, not to mention the pursuit of truth that should still be fundamental in academia and education more broadly, dishonesty involves deceit and thus victimisation, which is to say it tends to be used either a...

03/09/2025

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies

Volume 19 Issue 3

Special Issue: Invitation to Dance: Performing Disability Politics through the Dancing Body

Guest Editors: Stefan Sunandan Honisch and Gili Hammer

JLCDS is available from Liverpool University Press, online and in print, to institutional and individual subscribers; it is indexed by Scopus and Web of Science; it is also part of the Project MUSE collection to which the links below point.

Research Articles
Invitation to Dance: Performing Disability Politics through the Dancing Body
Stefan Sunandan Honisch and Gili Hammer
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/968134

Say That Again: How Disability Makes Dance
Alice Sheppard
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/968135

Performing Paradox: Sparks of a Q***r Crip Dance Aesthetic
Julia Havard
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/968136

Gesture, Dance, and Learning Disability
Margaret Ames
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/968137

Expanding Relationships between Dance, Disability and Prostheses: A Close Reading of Cuckoo as an Example of the Aesthetics of Representation and New Artistic Expressions
Sarah Whatley
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/968138

Corporeal Lived Experience of COVID-19: Disability, Dance and Pandemic-Triggered Adaption
Kathryn Stamp
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/968139

Surfacing Stones, Clearing Airs: Dancing as Knowing in the History of Medicine
Shireen Hamza
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/968140

Comments from the field
The Politics of the Disabled Dancing Body
Ginger Lane
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/968141

Some Things That I, as a Non-Disabled Dancemaker, Have Learned Through Working with Disabled Dancers
Victoria Marks
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/968142

Book Reviews
A.J. Sass, Ellen Outside the Lines.
Thasfiya Alavi and Shubha Ranganathan
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/968144

Jim Hoerricks, No Place for Autism? Exploring the solitary forager hypothesis of autism in the light of place identity.
Krysia Waldock
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/968145

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22/07/2025

Now available to pre-order, Cultural Stations of Disability: A Moment in Discourse

Edited by Prof David Bolt, with an afterword by eminent US professors Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, and Georgina Kleege, this new volume is of particular significance to Liverpool Hope University. The international gathering includes several colleagues, doctoral researchers, and graduates from the disability studies MA. Opening with artwork and a chapter by Prof Claire Penketh, the book contains contributions from Senior Lecturers Dr Ella Houston and Dr Erin Pritchard, as well as Dr Emma Swai, Frantzeska Zerva, and Marnie Mitchell.

In the disability community, which can have multiple meanings in itself, we often experience poignant moments in sociocultural discourse. Our pathways to knowledge and understanding of identity are defined by life’s landmarks, many of which resonate with what thereby become formative figures or artefacts. This mapping of key moments involves recognising, and reflecting upon, cultural stations of disability.

More than being demarcations of disruption to the normative social order, cultural stations of disability sometimes pertain to its very epitome. They hold something of a moment in discourse with which identification is paramount but variously emotive. They may capture feelings of liberation to which we joyfully return, difficult memories that we revisit to ponder, or the nadir of modernity from which we can only hope to learn.

In this edited volume, the international gathering of contributors finds and defines dozens of cultural stations of disability in music, art, film, television programs, literature, sitcom, activism, sport, performance, organisations, places, and events.

This is the 9th volume in Prof Bolt’s Routledge book series, Autocritical Disability Studies. For more information:

In the disability community, which can have multiple meanings in itself, we often experience poignant moments in sociocultural discourse. Our pathways to knowledge and understanding of identity are defined by life’s landmarks, many of which resonate with what thereby become formative figures or ar...

03/07/2025

Learning with Learning Disability: What Learning Disability Can Teach Us About Being Human by Owen Barden

Now available to pre-order, this book uses the concept of “learning disability” to explore what it means to be human. It argues that we need to learn with rather than from or about learning disability. This crucial distinction means being open to what learning disability can teach us about what it means to be human. This approach comes from recognising learning disability as an organising concept – a concept which radically transforms our sense of what it means to be – or not be – a person.

It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, the history of learning disability, humanism and posthumanism, and learning disability advocacy.

For more information about this monograph: https://www.routledge.com/Learning-with-Learning-Disability-What-Learning-Disability-Can-Teach-Us-About-Being-Human/Barden/p/book/9781032534138

A video about this monograph is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3HQ6-2WBlU&t=3s

This monograph is part of the Autocritical Disability Studies series edited by David Bolt.

Other monographs in the series include:

• Yoon Joo Lee’s Stories on Disability Through our Voices: Born This Way. A video is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyS6PZZatnk

• Ella Houston’s Advertising Disability. A video is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc9GUrulKHU&t=4s

• Erin Pritchard’s Midgetism: The Exploitation and Discrimination of People with Dwarfism. A video is available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgbKy-g1TEE

• David Bolt’s Disability Duplicity and the Formative Cultural Identity Politics of Generation X. A video is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJF2PPkwQlM&t=6s

30/05/2025

The Playground Model of Disability: Dis/honesty Tropes in Contemporary British Sociocultural Representation

New Book by Professor David Bolt

More than being counter to what we must surely endeavour to consider the status quo of honesty, not to mention the pursuit of truth that should still be fundamental in academia and education more broadly, dishonesty involves deceit and thus victimisation, which is to say it tends to be used either against someone or to give someone an unfair advantage. Such personal interactions are sometimes and, in the context of this book, revealingly referred to as the games people play.

When an unfair advantage is so given, someone else tends to be disadvantaged, an aspect of dishonesty that resonates with disablement. This book coins the term dis/honesty to define the many moments in which dishonesty is invoked by disability, and vice versa. The concept is explored via a selection of contemporary British sociocultural representations – namely, short jokes, disability sitcom, soap opera, activist radio interviews, fictionalised observations, and the robotic positionality of Artificial Intelligence.

In investigating these representations of dis/honesty, on the basis that the blueprint of adult behaviour is found in the schoolyard, playground figurations are posited as part of the autocritical framework. Remarkably, there are many such relationships with disablement, for intrinsic to Piggy in the Middle, Leapfrog, Pile On, Hide and Seek, Blind Man’s Bluff, and Robot Tick, among other playground games, is interpersonal inequity, whereby a normative position is juxtaposed with one defined by being outnumbered, inhibited, and/or singled out.

The playground model of disability reveals normative traditions that, according to a range of recent representations, people are often more than tempted to follow. Like a hegemonic game of Hopscotch, the way of the normative social order is sketched before us, complete with behavioural guidelines legitimised by repetition and competition. The book shows how dis/honesty tropes serve the normative social order; how the playground model can be used to critique instances in which disablement emanates from interactions more than institutions, people more than places.

For more information:

More than being counter to what we must surely endeavour to consider the status quo of honesty, not to mention the pursuit of truth that should still be fundamental in academia and education more broadly, dishonesty involves deceit and thus victimisation, which is to say it tends to be used either a...

29/05/2025

On 28 June 2024, the CCDS launched Dr Ella Houston's monograph Advertising Disability. The book is part of the Autocritical Disability Studies series edited by Prof David Bolt who introduced the launch. In addition, there is a response by Dr Catalin Brylla. The launch can now be viewed on the CCDS YouTube channel:

On 28 June, the CCDS hosted a research event that focused on improving representations of disabled people in the media. Organised by Hope’s Dr Houston and fu...

13/05/2025

CCDS: 15th Anniversary Symposium

Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University

1.30-4.30, 30th May, 2025

Hope Park, Conference Seminar Room 1 and 2

1.30-1.45 Welcome: In the Name of Disability Studies – Prof David Bolt

1.30-2.45 Panel 1: Institutional In/justice:

- Disability Studies: Palimpsest: The Im/possibility of Erasure – Prof Claire Penketh
- Barriers to Justice: Disabled Women's Experiences of Reporting R**e and Sexual Violence to the Police – Dr Leah Burch
- Dwarfism Arts and Advocacy: Creating Our Own Positive Identity – Dr Erin Pritchard

2.45-3.15 Break

3.15-4.15 Panel 2: Sociocultural Representation:
- Modalities of Creative Influence: Towards a Disability Studies Approach – Dr David Feeney
- A Perfect (Mis)fit for a Leader? Moses’s Speech Impediment, Disability Studies, and Early Christian Interpretation – Dr Dominika Kurek-Chomycz
- Down Right Hilarious: Comedy, Politics and the Lives of Women with Down Syndrome – Dr Laura Waite

This is a face-to-face event that we plan to make available via the CCDS YouTube channel. To book your place, free of charge, please go to the online store:

Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University1.30-4.30, 30th May, 2025Hope Park, Conference Seminar Room 1 and 2

28/04/2025

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies

Volume 19 Issue 2

JLCDS is available from Liverpool University Press, online and in print, to institutional and individual subscribers; it is indexed by Scopus and Web of Science; it is also part of the Project MUSE collection to which the links below point.

Articles

Neurodivergent Individuals, Agentic Crises, and Criminal Justice System in Jodi Picoult’s Change of Heart (2008) and House Rules (2010)
Manali Karmakar
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/958951

Accessing the Trail, Interpreting the Forest: Design, Ecology, and Feminist Disability Studies
Jordan Lea Johnson
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/958952

Disability as a Resource: Alternative Disability Discourse in Shi Tiesheng’s “The Temple of Earth and I”
He Huang
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/958953

Sightlessness and Knowledge in Jorge Luis Borges: Cultural and Archival Productions from the Margins
Felipe Moreira
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/958954

Portrayals of Voice and Mental Disability in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts
Wilma A. Andersson
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/958955

Disrupting Epistemology and Coalescing Community: Disability Activism on Social-Media
Marilyn Nicol and Sarah Best
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/958956

Comment from the Field

Collaborative effort instead of cultural appropriation: The Use of Braille by the Blind Photographer
Monika Dubiel
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/958957

Book Reviews

Bex Ollerton, Sensory: Life on the Spectrum
Em Peacock
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/958958

Wang Fuson, A Brief Literary History of Disability
Sara Dorsten
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/958959

Amanda Apgar, The Disabled Child: Memoirs of a Normal Future
Emily Stones
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/958960

Ella Houston, Advertising Disability
Beth Haller
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/958961

08/04/2025

Top 10 Most Popular Centre for Culture and Disability Studies YouTube Films

Each year we publish the new top ten in the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies from which the following is extracted:

1. Robert McRuer, “Crip Times,” 4,200 views, posted 1 Sep. 2017.

2. Owen Barden, “Posthumanism and Disability,” 3,500 views, posted 20 Mar. 2020.

3. Michael Stokes, “All You Zombies,” 2,200 views, posted 4 Oct. 2017.

4. Ella Houston, “The Representation of Disabled Women in Anglo American Advertising,” 2,000 views, posted 25 Oct. 2019.

5. Peter Beresford, “From Psychiatry to Disability Studies and Mad Studies,” 1,700 views, posted 2 Jul. 2015.

6. Lennard J. Davis, “The Stories We Tell: The Americans with Disabilities Act After 25 Years,” 1,500 views, posted 6 May 2015.

7. Lennard J. Davis, “Sorrowless Lamentation,” 1,500 views, posted 22 Nov. 2017.

8. Erin Pritchard, “The Social and Spatial Experiences of Dwarfs in Public Spaces,” 1,300 views, posted 14 Feb. 2020.

9. David Bolt, “Cultural Disability Studies in Education,” 1,000 views, posted 25 Jul. 2018.

10. Margaret Price, “An Unstable and Fantastical Space of Absence,” 922 views, posted 15 Dec. 2016.

These videos and many more are available on the CCDS YouTube channel:

Founded in 2009, at Liverpool Hope University, the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies (CCDS) enables and endorses interdisciplinary research activities among an extended community of disabled and non-disabled academics. We cross the lines that usually define the social sciences, education, an...

05/03/2025

CCDS: 15th Anniversary Symposium

Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University

1.30-4.30, 30th May, 2025

Hope Park, Conference Seminar Room 1 and 2

1.30-1.45 Welcome: In the Name of Disability Studies – Prof David Bolt

1.45-2.45 Panel 1: Institutional In/justice:
- Disability Studies: Palimpsest: The Im/possibility of Erasure – Prof Claire Penketh
- Reflections on Taking a Disability Studies Approach to Flipped Learning – Dr Irene Rose
- The Cost of Being: How Language is Used to Calculate Human Worth in Welfare Documents – Dr Manel Herat
- Barriers to Justice: Disabled Women's Experiences of Reporting R**e and Sexual Violence to the Police – Dr Leah Burch

2.45-3.15 Break

3.15-4.15 Panel 2: Sociocultural Representation:
- Modalities of Creative Influence: Towards a Disability Studies Approach – Dr David Feeney
- A Perfect (Mis)fit for a Leader? Moses’s Speech Impediment, Disability Studies, and Early Christian Interpretation – Dr Dominika Kurek-Chomycz
- Down Right Hilarious: Comedy, Politics and the Lives of Women with Down Syndrome – Dr Laura Waite
- Dwarfism Arts and Advocacy: Creating Our Own Positive Identity – Dr Erin Pritchard

This is a face-to-face event that we plan to make available via the CCDS YouTube channel. To book your place, free of charge, please go to the online store:

Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University1.30-4.30, 30th May, 2025Hope Park, Conference Seminar Room 1 and 2

03/02/2025

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies

Volume 19 Issue 1

Special Issue: Disability Impact

JLCDS is available from Liverpool University Press, online and in print, to institutional and individual subscribers; it is indexed by Scopus and Web of Science; it is also part of the Project MUSE collection to which the links below point.

Articles

Introduction: Disability Impact
David Bolt
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/950593

Interdisciplinarity and Stages in a Process of Engagement with Theatre Practice and Disability
Michelle Worthington
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/950594

Reading the Realm of the Visible: Exploring Norms of Seeing and Deafness Storied as Trouble
Elaine Cagulada
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/950595

Reconceptualizing Blindness through the Political/Relational Model
Sabrina Durso
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/950596

“Accept me for what I am and I’ll accept you for what you’re accepted as”: The lack of engagement with Christopher Nolan’s works
David Wilders
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/950597

Skin Scarred by Structural Violence: A Study of Vitriolage in India
Radhika Sharma and Nagendra Kumar
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/950598

Disability Images as Evidence: Enabling Access to Justice
Nandana R
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/950599

Comment from the field

Disability Impact: The Annual Conference of Interdisciplinary, Intersectional, and International Disability Studies 2023, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK.
Lauren Hamilton
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/950600

Disability Histories: Multiple Engagement Event, Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University, 7th February, 2024
Emma Swai
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/950601

Book Reviews

Claire Penketh, A History of Disability and Art Education
Juuso Tervo
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/950602

Yoshiko Okuyama, Tōjisha Manga: Japan’s Graphic Memoirs of Brain and Mental Health
Frank Mondelli
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/950603

Wei Yu Wayne Tan, Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity
Yoshiko Okuyama
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/950604